House Arrest Read online

  Emma smiled—and someone seeing that smile might have been disturbed by it. It was the smile of a predator that had just caught the first scent of its prey.

  Why would Lynch have hidden a phone? If he was involved in Canton’s murder, the answer was obvious: The people who murdered Canton and framed DeMarco would have needed to communicate with one another to plan and execute such a complicated crime—and they wouldn’t have used phones registered to them. They would have used burner phones, like the one she’d just found.

  She turned on the phone and looked at the contacts list and recent calls directory. There were no recent calls or text messages—they’d most likely been deleted—and there was only one number in the contacts list. There was no name, however, assigned to the number. Emma wrote down the phone number for Lynch’s burner phone and the single number in the contacts list, then placed the phone back in the heating duct.

  She glanced at her watch. Almost two hours had passed since she’d begun searching, and she needed to go before Lynch got home from work, but she decided to take one last tour of the apartment to see if there was anyplace else she should look. As she was walking, a thought occurred to her: If Lynch had been paid to kill Canton, where was the money? He didn’t have a backyard, so it wasn’t buried there. It wasn’t in his checking or savings account; Neil had peeked into Lynch’s accounts, and there was no evidence that he had recently come into money. His banking records had indicated that he didn’t have a safe-deposit box, at least not in the same bank where he had his checking account.

  It was possible that if Lynch had received any money, it had been electronically deposited in some offshore bank—which was maybe another reason Lynch had obtained a passport: so one day he could fly to that foreign bank to collect his well-earned fee. It seemed to her though, that Lynch, a man who was almost broke, would want at least part of his payment in cash in case he needed to flee. But where would he hide the cash? If he’d buried it someplace or put it in a rented storage locker she’d never find it, and she knew it wasn’t in his apartment, as she’d searched everyplace there was to search. She stripped off her gloves, getting ready to leave, when something occurred to her.

  She’d found in Lynch’s living room a small canvas bag containing tools, the sort of tools an apartment dweller might own: a battery-powered electric drill and drill bits, a hammer, a box cutter, pliers, a set of screwdrivers and wrenches, a plastic container filled with screws of various sizes. In other words, the sort of tools you might use for assembling IKEA furniture or hanging pictures. In that same bag, she’d also found a can of Spackle for patching holes in walls and a small roll of joint tape—the type of tape used for installing wallboard or drywall, to cover the seams. Why would Lynch have joint tape? If for some reason one of the walls in his apartment needed to be repaired, he’d ask his landlord to do it.

  She went back and looked at the bag of tools again. In the plastic box containing assorted screws she noticed something she hadn’t noticed before: half a dozen two-and-a-half-inch-long blue screws for attaching drywall to studs.

  Emma made another tour of Lynch’s apartment, this time examining the walls. They were all painted eggshell white, but they probably hadn’t been painted in a decade and were now a yellowish color, making her wonder if one of the previous occupants had been a heavy smoker. There were black scuff marks in places where furniture had scraped the walls, and there were two dozen holes in places where pictures had been hung and removed. (Lynch had not hung a single picture.) The walls in the small kitchen were covered with a thin layer of grease, and it was apparent they had never been cleaned, much less repaired or replaced.

  She started to leave for the second time when it occurred to her that there were walls she hadn’t examined—in the closets. She went back to the bedroom closet and pushed the clothes aside. The closet’s back wall—which was about six feet high and four feet wide—was a freshly painted eggshell white. She also noted a few drops of paint on the closet floor.

  Emma smiled again: the wolf catching a glimpse of a red hood in the forest.

  She put the clothes back where they’d been and left Lynch’s apartment.

  She would be back.

  28

  Emma sat impatiently, rubbing her forehead, her eyes closed, as Neil prepared to trace the phone call.

  She had decided to call the number in the phone she’d found hidden in Lynch’s apartment from Neil’s office, because Neil would be able to record the call and, more important, would be able to locate the phone. His equipment would give her a street address or GPS coordinates.

  Finally, after tinkering with one of his machines for what had seemed an eternity, Neil said, “Okay. All set.”

  Tapping a keyboard, he entered the number, and the phone being called began to ring. On the fifth ring a man’s voice said, “Yes?”

  One of Neil’s computers responded: “Hi, this is Emily. Are you burdened by credit card debt? If so—”

  The person who answered grunted a curse and hung up—but Emma had what she wanted. A monitor on Neil’s desk showed a map, and on the map was a pulsing red dot—the location of the phone he’d just called.

  “Where is it?” Emma asked.

  Neil’s fat, nimble fingers danced across the keyboard, and a millisecond later an address appeared. “It’s in Spear Industries’ headquarters in Reston,” he said.

  Yes! Emma finally had something more than a theory. She had evidence that supported her theory. She now knew that the unregistered phone that John Lynch had hidden extremely well was being used to communicate with somebody at Spear Industries. Whether it was Spear, Brayden, Orlov, or someone else she didn’t know—but she knew enough to know that she was on the right track.

  Now she wanted to know what was hidden behind the freshly painted wall in John Lynch’s closet.

  Miguel Rivera had curly black hair streaked with gray and a thick mustache that he was vain about. He was only five foot six but heavily muscled from a lifetime of manual labor.

  Miguel was a master craftsman and could do just about anything: plumbing, electrical wiring, masonry, cabinet and countertop installation. Emma had been using him for years for home repairs and remodeling projects, and at six a.m. the day after she’d searched Lynch’s apartment, she was sitting with Miguel in his pickup in front of Lynch’s apartment building. They were waiting for Lynch to leave for his job at the Capitol; his shift started at seven.

  At ten minutes past six, Lynch left his apartment and began walking in the direction of a bus stop. Emma knew that the bus would take him to the Braddock Road Metro station, and from there he would catch the subway to the Capitol. He wouldn’t return to his apartment for at least ten hours.

  Then they waited for another two hours. Emma wanted the other tenants in the building to head off for work or school or wherever they spent their day. She suspected the building wouldn’t be completely empty when she and Miguel went inside, but fewer tenants meant fewer witnesses, which would definitely be better.

  As they waited, Emma talked to Miguel, asking after his wife and daughters, what he thought of the Nationals’ chances this year, his opinion of the moron who was currently president—just small talk that gave her an opportunity to practice her Spanish, but mostly she was trying to get him to relax. She wasn’t successful. He was so nervous he looked ill.

  At eight Emma said, “Let’s go.”

  They were both wearing blue coveralls with matching blue baseball caps, looking, Emma hoped, like a small—and legitimate—construction crew. In the back of Miguel’s truck were a sheet of drywall, tools for removing and installing drywall, and a can of eggshell-white paint.

  Emma carried the tools and the paint, and Miguel carried the sheet of drywall to the door of Lynch’s apartment building. Emma held the door open for Miguel, and they proceeded up the stairs to Lynch’s apartment, Emma unconsciously humming “Whistle While You Work.”

  Emma said, “Are you sure you’re okay with doing this, Miguel?
We haven’t done anything illegal yet, and I’m not going to get mad at you if you want to back out.”

  Miguel didn’t want to do this at all, but he said, “I’m okay.” He didn’t look okay; he looked as if he was about to vomit.

  Emma had told him that she planned to break into a man’s apartment and remove and replace a section of drywall in a closet. And that’s all she was planning to do. She wasn’t going to steal anything. If they were caught by the police—which she assured him was highly unlikely—they’d be arrested for breaking and entering. If they were caught, Emma said that she would take the blame and swear that she’d told Miguel that she was the owner of the apartment and had tricked him into helping her—but the police most likely wouldn’t believe her, and they both might be charged. Since neither of them had a criminal record, and since they’d have the help of Emma’s high-priced lawyer, it was unlikely that they’d actually spend any time in jail. Emma had also told Miguel that she’d pay him a thousand dollars for a couple of hours of work, knowing Miguel could use the money. She honestly wasn’t concerned about getting him into trouble, but she could see that he was clearly having second thoughts.

  Emma once again picked the locks on Lynch’s apartment door, while Miguel stood there terrified that one of the other tenants in the building might come down the hall as she was doing so. Once they were inside the apartment, it took five minutes for them to remove the clothes and shoes from Lynch’s bedroom closet and another ten minutes for Miguel to remove the wallboard at the back of the closet.

  Between the wall studs were stacks of currency wrapped in clear plastic. Miguel gasped when he saw the money; Emma smiled.

  Emma peeled back the plastic from one of the stacks of currency, and saw that the bills were in twenty-, fifty-, and hundred-dollar denominations. Had they all been the same denomination she could have calculated how much money Lynch had hidden, but as they were different denominations she couldn’t. If she had to guess, however, she would have said that there was between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars.

  Two hours later they were finished, and Lynch’s clothes were back in his closet. Miguel had installed a new section of wallboard and painted it. Emma had hauled away the old pieces of wallboard and placed them in Miguel’s truck. Emma used Lynch’s vacuum cleaner to clean up the closet floor, and Miguel used a hair dryer to more rapidly dry the quick-drying paint he’d applied. The smell of new paint was still evident, but Lynch wouldn’t be home for at least another six hours, and they hoped that by then the odor wouldn’t be noticeable among the other odors in his dusty, dirty apartment.

  Emma didn’t know it, but after Miguel dropped her off back at her house, and she’d paid him the money she’d promised, he went to the nearest Catholic church, put a hundred dollars in the poor box, lit ten votive candles, and prayed to Saint Nicholas—the patron saint of repentant thieves.

  Emma showered and then made a tomato and cucumber salad for lunch. As she ate, she thought about the money she’d found in Lynch’s apartment. There was no way he could have saved a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars, not on his salary, and not with the alimony he was paying his ex-wife. But why had he hidden the money the way he did?

  She had a theory, another theory. Lynch was worried that if he was ever investigated for Canton’s murder—as unlikely as that possibility now seemed—the FBI would look into his finances. Therefore, he couldn’t put the money he’d been paid for killing Canton into a bank account; he had to put it someplace that couldn’t be found, yet at the same time a place he’d be able to get to quickly if he had to run. And he’d done an excellent job of hiding the money; had Emma not seen the drywall screws and the joint tape, she never would have found it.

  Another thing occurred to her. If Lynch had killed Canton—and she was now almost certain he was involved, not only because of the money but also because of the burner phone she’d found—he would know that he couldn’t begin to act like a man who’d suddenly come into a fortune. She imagined his plan was to wait a suitable period, quit the Capitol Police, and then, using his new passport, head off to some sunny place with a low cost of living and enjoy the good life. She also imagined he’d been paid more than the amount she’d found hidden behind the closet wall. Had she been him, she surely would have demanded more than two hundred grand for killing Canton, particularly if the one paying her was a man as wealthy as Sebastian Spear. She suspected he had more money in an offshore account, although at this point, whether he did or not was irrelevant, because Emma now had evidence that she could present to the FBI, evidence that would hopefully get them looking at someone other than DeMarco. Once the FBI was convinced that Lynch had been involved in Canton’s murder, they’d go back over all the security videos and see if they could prove he was at the Capitol when Canton was killed.

  The problem she now had, however, was that she wasn’t exactly sure how she should tell the FBI about evidence that she’d obtained by illegally searching a man’s apartment. As determined as she was to help DeMarco, she’d just as soon not get arrested herself.

  She took out her cell phone, planning to call her lawyer to ask for some advice, and noticed her phone was turned off. She’d turned it off before breaking into Lynch’s apartment; if her phone had rung or vibrated while she was in there with Miguel, the poor man might have soiled his britches.

  She turned on her phone and discovered that she had two voice mails, one from Mahoney and one from DeMarco’s lawyer.

  Both messages were the same: DeMarco was at Inova Alexandria Hospital.

  He was in a coma.

  29

  The contraband phone in Jesús Díaz’s pocket vibrated. He looked at the text, written in Spanish. It said: He’s on his way.

  Jesús was nineteen years old, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. He was in the Alexandria jail awaiting trial for assaulting his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Following his trial he’d be either deported or sentenced to five years in prison, as he’d almost killed the boyfriend. Deportation seemed more likely. During his eight months in the Alexandria jail, Jesús had been given a choice: join MS-13 or get your ass whipped on a daily basis. He’d opted to join.

  Jesús worked in the jail kitchen; you didn’t have to graduate from a culinary school to scrub pots and pans. The text message he’d just received meant that the guard who would bring DeMarco his lunch was on his way to the cafeteria.

  Jesús walked over to the serving line and up to one of the servers, a black guy who was about ninety years old. Okay, he wasn’t that old, but he was fuckin’ old. He told the old guy, “I’m taking your place for the next ten minutes.” The old guy looked as if he was about to object, then was smart enough to realize it wasn’t worth it—which was most likely why he’d lived as long as he had.

  The guard, a mean prick named Donovan who delighted in using his baton on the inmates, walked into the cafeteria at that moment, came up to the serving line, and pushed aside the prisoners waiting in line. He said to Jesús, “Make me up a tray.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Jesús said.

  Jesús grabbed a tray, put two slices of meat loaf on it, green beans, a mound of instant mashed potatoes slathered with instant brown gravy, and a piece of dry, white cake with chocolate frosting. As he was putting the food on the tray, another MS-13 member—a kid named Angel Gómez, awaiting his trial for robbing a bodega—walked up to Donovan, tapped him on the back, and said, “I wanna register a complaint.”

  Donovan spun around and said, “Did you just touch me?”

  “Hey, there’s a guy,” Angel said. “He’s some kind of homo, and last night—”

  “I don’t give a shit what he did to you. You ever put a hand on me again—”

  “Hey, man, I’m sorry, but this guy—”

  “Back off, you little shit. Right now.”

  While Angel was distracting Donovan, Jesús took a small vial out of a pocket and poured the liquid in the vial over everything on DeMarco’s lunc
h tray except the cake. The cake might look funny if the frosting was wet. He palmed the vial and said to Donovan, “Hey, boss, your tray is ready.”

  Donovan took the tray from Jesús, brushed past Angel with a contemptuous sneer, and walked away.

  The thing that saved DeMarco’s life was the unappetizing nature of the food. The meat loaf tasted as if the hamburger had been mixed with sawdust, the mashed potatoes were cold, the green beans soggy. The only edible item was the piece of cake. He took two bites of the meat loaf, one forkful of mashed potatoes, ate about three green beans, and then had dessert.

  Five minutes later, he was having a hard time breathing—it felt as if a python was wrapped around his throat—and he couldn’t seem to get any air into his lungs. He staggered over to the door, his face turning red, and began beating on the door with his fist. He tried to yell but couldn’t.

  The guard standing outside his cell slid back the peephole panel and looked in, wondering what the fuckin’ guy was doing, pounding on the door. So far DeMarco hadn’t been a problem inmate. At first he couldn’t see DeMarco, then he saw his legs. He was on the floor, his legs were twitching, and he was making a weird, choking sound. The guard opened the door, took one look at DeMarco’s purple face, and screamed into his radio, “This is Moran in isolation. I need a medic! Need a medic now!”

  Moran didn’t know what to do. He’d been given CPR training but had practiced only once on the CPR dummy. He screamed into his radio again, “Goddamnit, get a medic here!” He dropped to his knees, trying to remember what he’d been taught, and pushed down on DeMarco’s chest three times, then pinched DeMarco’s nose and started blowing air into his mouth. Thank God one of the medics got there ten seconds later.